


April Fool's

by ChromaticDreams



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Both of these brothers need hugs, Gen, Gun Violence, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Mild Language, Non-Graphic Violence, Panic Attacks, Stan O' War, please hug them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-23 23:52:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10729890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChromaticDreams/pseuds/ChromaticDreams
Summary: Stan's attempt at an April Fool's prank aboard the Stan O' War goes terribly wrong.





	1. A Harmless Prank

**Author's Note:**

> A short lil' thing I originally wrote for my tumblr. After a few weeks I still liked it enough to fix a few little things, and wanted to finally post it here.
> 
> I intend to write an aftermath for this, which is why it's listed as incomplete, but I honestly have no idea when I'll finish that. The agonies of being an inconstantly scheduled writer, oh no! :OO

Stanley Pines hummed merrily as his gnarled knuckles wrapped around the sink tap and twisted it on. Lukewarm water slowly began to pour from the facet, drumming against the base of his metal bucket with a resonant ring. He nearly winced at how _loud_ the initial rush of water was, but he supposed the noise couldn’t be helped. If he were lucky, his nerd brother would find himself so absorbed in studying and cataloging their latest catch that he wouldn’t find any iota of suspicion in his current doings…  
  
He doubted Ford remembered, but today marked April first. April Fool’s Day. One of their favorite days as kids. Forty plus years prior, they took great pleasure in springing pranks on each other and their family that day. Young Stan aimed for the classics- whoopee cushion under his father’s seat at dinner, Groucho Marx glasses at the temple, smearing whipped cream over Ford’s face when he was sleeping- the list of practical jokes was nearly endless. Ford, on the other hand, was more of a Rube Goldberg machine kind of guy. He’d spend weeks engineering and constructing elaborate set-ups that would fling those plastic slinky snakes at Ma from across the room when her heel hit a tripwire hidden in the carpet. Oh man, they could laugh for hours at the sheer variety of treacherous gags they’ve pulled on this day!  
  
However, he and Ford hadn’t gotten to terrorize each other with stupid pranks since they were seventeen. Truth be told, this was one of the things he missed most about their relationship. While they’d long since made up, and while Stan recognized they were still working towards rekindling their brotherhood, he longed for the day when he stopped feeling like he was constantly _tiptoeing_ around Ford. He longed for the day his brother stopped treating him like fragile glass. And his hope was that cracking a classic, harmless prank might help with those issues. Remind them of their past a little. To remind them that a little poking fun at each other is okay.

“Doo-doo-doo da-doo, filling a big metal bucket full of water,” he muttered to himself in a sing-song voice as the tap continued to pour, “so I can dump it on my twin bro’s head!”  
  
Stan faintly recalled pulling a similar prank when they were nine. He poured a tray of ice cubes down the back of Ford’s shirt. His brother shrieked like a five-year-old girl at first, and then proceeded to chuck the ice right back at him, giggling the whole time. Their Ma threw a fit when she found the watery mess their feud left in the kitchen, but it was worth it for the laughs.  
  
Man, he hoped they could both get a similar chuckle out of this. He always loved the sound of Ford’s laughter.  
  
Stanley waited until the water filled the bucket, and promptly shut off the tap. With a labored grunt, he hefted the bucket out of the sink and onto the floor, wincing at the way his joints creaked as he straightened his back. Step one was complete.  
  
Step two was to simply smoke ol’ Sixer out of his hive, get into place, and wait for the perfect moment…

* * *

 

  
“Hey Sixer, get out here, would ya’? There’s somethin’ all spooky like out in the water. I think it might be another one a’ those… uh, another one of ‘em seven headed squid things?”  
  
“Mmm, coming,” Ford muttered distractedly, eyes securely fixed on the half-filled parchment before him and the nerve sample suspended in a vial of formaldehyde upon the desk. The sample came from the thirteen-armed serpent they conquered a week prior. From all the taxonomic scientific literature he’d referenced while conducting his study, the creature seemingly had not yet been discovered by marine scientists. Excitingly, this meant that he would be tasked with naming this new strange anomalous species, and with presenting his findings to the scientific community when they reached shore again.  
  
The moment his pen touched to make the first stroke against roughhewn paper, Stan’s gravelly voice filtered through the thin walls again.  
  
“Ford, if ya’ don’t get your nerd ass out on deck in the next minute, I’m _feeding you_ to the squid!”  
  
He tossed the fountain pen to the side of his journal and pushed himself out of his chair in one fluid motion. “All right, all right!” he hollered back.  
  
Ford carded all twelve fingers through his thick greying hair, and rolled his eyes at the wooden ceiling with a heavy breath. God, what had gotten into Stanley today? He wasn’t usually so unnerved about the magical creatures they encountered in this span of open sea. Hastily, he snagged one of his overcoats and a scarf from the coat hook by the door. He shrugged his shoulders through the long, padded sleeves as he crossed into the main cabin of their ship, and then wound the warm knit scarf— midnight blue and peppered with glitter for stars, Mabel’s design— around his neck. His hand brushed against the comforting weight at the left of his hips, the titanium blaster he’d brought back with him from his journeys through the multiverse. He only had to use it once since his return home, and probably didn’t _need_ to lug it everywhere now that he wasn’t constantly on the run from bounty hunters, but old habits die hard. Beyond that, in his first weeks back in Gravity Falls, he quickly discovered that the familiar weight helped ground him whenever he was griped with panic or fell into dissociation. **  
**  
He swung the cabin door open with caution. Cool, salty sea air filled his nose almost instantly, and tickled at the hair at his jawline and chin he’d allowed to grow slightly beyond stubble. (Any longer, and he might soon have a burgeoning beard just like Stanley’s, he realized with a snort.) From first glance, the water seemed too calm to be hiding any large territorial creatures that might pose threat to their ship, but admittedly he had been woefully wrong in his assumptions before. Sea monsters were nothing but unpredictable, and especially those that had evaded oceanic cataloguers’ sights all this time. Meanwhile, Stan was nowhere to be seen on deck—despite his call— proving nearly as evasive as their deep-sea cryptids.  
  
Ford had just opened his mouth to call for his brother when his sensitive ears picked up on the muted sound of liquid sloshing from above.  


* * *

  
Barely holding in his laughter, Stanley— who knelt on the roof of the cabin right over the outer doorway— tipped his bucket over the edge. He watched with anticipation as the water cascaded down towards his brother’s head.  
  
If only he noticed earlier how Ford’s dominant hand nervously twitched next to the holster at his hip as he exited the cabon, perhaps he would have possessed the good sense to leave him be.

If only he took account of the way his brother’s entire body seized up milliseconds before the water’s impact as if expecting an attack… perhaps he would have had time to duck.  


* * *

  
The instant he heard it, it was as if his conscious mind drifted a thousand miles away. His legs were rooted to the deck. Distantly, Ford felt the lukewarm liquid hit his head, utterly flattening his hair and soaking through his overcoat and shirt all the way to skin. Heard a loud clap as the remaining fluid splashed onto the deck. It was warm. His imagination immediately brought images of the multitude of monolithic horrors he'd faced, especially the kinds that soaked their food in tepid stomach acid to aid in digestion before their victims were consumed. Suddenly midday turned into night, and the nebulous skies of alien worlds soared overhead. His vision became glassy and his pulse skyrocketed as the lifesaving mantra that consistently dominated his mind whilst beyond the portal took hold of his tense limbs.  
  
_Danger! Danger! Danger!!_

From outside himself he watched his hand find the grip of his gun, tightening around the thick rubber. Watched his body fall easily into an offensive stance as he’d done _time after time after time_. He swung around, senses alight, brain conjuring any number of fearsome beasts from the scourges of his memory…

Finger on the trigger.

Hands shaking. 

Eyelids squeezed shut. Muscles contracting.

Even though his mind felt miles away from the deck of the ship, the firing of the gun left a cacophony of ringing in his ears. The kickback shook his joints.

It was his brother’s scream that finally knocked him back into himself.

“ _AUGGH, goddamn_!”

With a heaving gasp, he was violently thrown into full awareness of his own body. He could barely push past his own quickened breaths to concentrate on the scene before him. His eyes panned from the gun he held in trembling hands, to the emptied bucket that had fallen onto deck, to above. To Stanley. Images of demons and leviathans and beasts shattered like glass, replaced by the sight of his own twin brother, cradling his left shoulder. He could already see blood pooling from in between his fingers.

“F- _fuck_ ,” Stan hissed, tears rimming his reddened eyes.  
  
Ford let out a choked sob as he realized what just happened, _what he just did_. The muscles of his right hand went slack, and the gun clattered onto the wooden deck. His lungs burned as his already hastened breathing turned into strained wheezing. Numbed fingers frantically pressed against his face, clawing at the frame of his glasses. He felt his legs propel him through the door, into his cabin, _away_. Heard Stan’s voice hollering his name. Sensed his body folding in on itself, his hands griping harshly at his hair. A harsh ringing echoed through his ears, causing his head to seem heavy and the world he inhabited to feel little more than an elaborate, cruel facade.

 _Monster,_ he spat at himself. Clutching his knees tight to his chest and struggling to breathe, the man began to weep. 


	2. Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness this has literally been a year in the making. Bless you for your patience, I finally finished it. It's kinda a bit of a rough job I fear, but I hope you enjoy anyways.

Breath moved through his lungs in irregular patterns, every gasp for air feeling like someone had dropped a rough-edged stone down his trachea. Old, gnarled knuckles gripped the sides of his jeans with an unbridled ferocity, squeezing whole rivulets of water from the fabric. Under equally waterlogged jacket sleeves, his hair stood on end. Nothing seemed entirely real. Not the floorboards under him, nor the wet clothes on his back. Not even the rhythm of slow rocking, back and forth, uncontrollable in its maddening persistence.

He had awareness, yes, as meager and narrow in scope as that awareness might be. But between this and the tumultuous cascade of panic induced thinking and distraught emotion currently coursing through his mind, he had no control.

He choked back a sob, dug his heels into the floor—  _ he shot Stan, shot Stanley, the bullet punctured his shoulder, there’d be obvious soft tissue damage and the likelihood of damage to nerves and major blood vessels was incredibly high and if left too long without proper medical care he would bleed out and they were more than two hundred miles off shore and Stan wouldn’t make it before they reached a hospital and he’d fall unconscious on deck from the blood loss and he killed him he killed him oh  _ god _ he killed him he killed him he _ — and buried his head even deeper between his knees.

Stan was... alone... still above deck. Bleeding out, hurt, all because of him. But out of all the confusing, muddled thoughts he found himself assaulted by, one pierced through the fog with more violent intensity than the others:

This was a mistake.

All of it. From the moment he invited Stan to join him sailing, to their difficulties procuring the boat in the planning phase, him bringing his gun on board instead of getting rid of it months ago like he should have in the first place, letting his brother even come anywhere near him...

Their voyage was cursed.  _ He _ was cursed. Stan wasn’t safe around him. The kids weren’t safe around him. He’s too broken, too scarred, too likely to hurt anyone he came close to, too—

“Hey,” a familiar voice called after him, low and weathered but soft in tone. “Hey. Ford. It’s gonna be okay, o- okay? Y’hear me?”

 

________

 

Stan bit back a flurry of strong curses as he watched his brother drop the gun and scurry away, back to hide in the cabin. 

“Welp, none of this went as planned,” he said lowly, reminders of the recent past throbbing like an exposed nerve. “Stan, you  _ idiot…” _

He hissed _ , _ pressing his hand flush to the expanse of skin where the bullet grazed his shoulder. Thankfully the wound wasn’t too significant— it merely ruined a shirt and cleaved through a chunk of skin and shoulder hair— but he knew he had to stanch the blood flow and find some sterile coverings quickly. And he needed to check on Ford. He… in fact, he should probably do that first. They hadn’t actually discussed the matter, but he knew how self destructive his brother could become towards himself at times, emotionally and physically. His arm would be fine. He’d survived far worse in his youth.

Carefully, he climbed off the roof of the cabin, his feet making solid contact against the deck. The floorboards, unsurprisingly, were slick. After experiencing every imaginable kind of weather on this ship, however, Stan was fairly used to traversing a wet deck, and crossed to the cabin door with the practiced ease of a true sailor. He swung it open, and peeked in. Ford sat huddled and small under his desk across the cabin, his head buried between his knees. He rocked back and forth, slowly and without any identifiable beat, and he was breathing so rapidly it sounded like he was about to hyperventilate. 

“Hey,” he called to his brother softly, not wanting to approach too suddenly. “Hey. Ford. It’s gonna be okay, o- okay? I’m all right. Y’hear me?”

No vocal response. Ford’s breath hitched for a moment, perhaps in base recognition that he was here, but nothing more. Stan frowned. He'd seen people react like this before. _How did he help them then?_

“Ford,” he tried again, edging closer, kneeling on the floor beside him. “Hey, buddy. Listen, I think you’re havin’ a panic attack. You need to calm your breathing. We- we can try ta’ breathe together slowly, okay?”

Ford lifted his head from his knees a bit, the first true sign that he heard a single word of what he said. He snuck a rudimentary glance at Stan, but his eyes, red-rimmed and puffy, quickly wavered.

“But…” he managed to say. “Your shoulder—”

“—is  _ fine _ . It’s just a graze, I’ll live. I forgive ya’, an’ it happens. Shouldn’t have been messing with ya’ anyways. Right now though, we’re focusing on you. Come on, deep breath, Sixer. In…”

His first attempt at filling his lungs came with difficulty, segmented by shallow gasps. But as Stan continued to breathe with him and set a stable pace, he began to follow, the tempo of his breath evening out. His body too unraveled, like an insect emerging from its protective cocoon. After a few more minutes passed, so did the brunt of his episode. Stan gently rest his hand on his arm, squeezing so he knew he was still there with him. Subtly, his brother squirmed away from his touch. His cheeks burned with shame, and he looked away.

“I’m sorry. By all reason I probably shouldn’t be anywhere near you,” he said, his voice tight.

“Hey. You know that’s not true.”

“But I shot you!” he protested, clenching his fists together in his lap. “Damnit Stanley, I shot you unprovoked at point blank! It’s obvious I’m not fit to be around anyone right now.”

“But it  _ wasn’t _ unprovoked! All I wanted was to play a stupid prank, and yet… I should’ve just left you alone,” Stan said with a heavy sigh. “It’s me who should be apologizing.”

“No, it’s  _ me _ who shouldn’t be constantly carrying a loaded gun at my hip,” his brother muttered morosely, gesturing at the empty holster attached to his belt. “Not with- well...” He bit at his lip. If Stan knew anything about his twin, that was a sign that he was currently overthinking his next words and their potential outcome.

“What? What’s eatin’ at ya’? You look like steam’s ‘bouta pour out your ears.”

“Before I shot you. All the water…”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know w-why, but in the moment, I think it genuinely transported my mental state back There,” Ford said, tasting every word, and he could almost hear the capitalization in his words. The lingering fear, the same fear that frosted his first panicked words to him a few minutes ago. “For the life of me, I thought I’d been attacked by some monster. I could see it, smell its rancid breath… and it’s not like this is my first time,” he said ruefully. 

Stan frowned as he shifted on the floor, just barely disturbing his shoulder. He stifled a hiss, and dabbed his fingers around the delicate skin of the wound, checking for swelling. All the while, he considered how he might respond.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were having troubles like this?” he asked eventually.

“Because I- well, because you didn’t deserve to be burdened by—”

“No,” he said, heart sinking at his words. “Listen. Your wellbeing is  _ not _ a burden to me. It’s never been. Understand?”

His brother fell uncharacteristically quiet. On a normal day, Ford wouldn't shut up, constantly enthusing about a new finding or an interesting fact about a country or historical event or scientific field he'd learned through his readings. Stan heaved a sigh. 

“I’ll take your rare silence as a sign you’re listening.”

“You’re still bleeding.”

“Yeah, and so what?”

“Which means it hasn’t clotted yet,” he pointed out, gesturing at his wound. “I’d honestly feel a lot better if we took you to a hospital.”

“Come on, it’s just a little blood, I’m not gonna bleed out. I’ll be fine.”

“Stanley.”

“No. We're what, two hundred somethin' miles off shore? There’s no sense wasting time going to a damn hospital if I can stand upright!”

Ford shot him a pleading expression, one that didn’t take much of a trick to win him over to his side.

_ “Fine _ , fine, I guess we can hit up a non-emergency clinic or something, if you’re that worried over your dear bro.”

“Thank you,” Ford said earnestly. 

“But,” Stan continued, holding up a finger, “If I’m going to a clinic, then we’re going together. They can patch up my arm, and we can get someone ta’ talk to ya’ about these flashbacks you’ve been having... and maybe get you some help?” He scratched at the back of his neck. “I mean, they’re still kinda just a bunch of shrinks, but I dunno, it’s helped me some. Sometimes they can medicate ya.”

“And in the meantime, I can help wrap your shoulder,” Ford said- not quite the vocal agreement he desired, but for now he’d take it. 

For now, they had time to heal.

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
